


Defective Motivations

by Evandar



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Child Death, Family Drama, Gen, Kid Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-27
Updated: 2014-02-27
Packaged: 2018-01-14 00:37:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1246153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Evandar/pseuds/Evandar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sirius is the best brother in the world until he's not anymore, and Phineas won't let what happened to him happen again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Defective Motivations

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the Poetry_Fic 2014 Fest on DW and is based on - not only the poetry quote at the end, which was my prompt - a picture of the Black family tree, which shows that Phineas Nigellus had a brother (Sirius) who died when he was eight.

Sirius stands with his back to the wall outside the drawing room door. He’s chewing on his lip in the way that mother always scolds him for and his eyes are shut. He’s listening to something, and he doesn’t like what he hears. Phineas joins him, creeping close and pressing against his brother’s body so that he too can listen at the door.

His parents are talking. He doesn’t understand the word “defective” yet, but he knows what they’re talking about when mother hisses “he can’t be a _Squib_ ” as if it’s the worst of words. He feels Sirius’ breath hitch, and he looks up at his brother with wide, wondering eyes. Sirius has magic, he’s seen it – and Sirius was given great-grandfather’s old wand two days ago to practice with – but it’s a subtle kind of magic. It slides under Sirius’ skin like a fish in a pond, barely causing a ripple and only visible at the strangest of times.

Sirius looks down at him, silver eyes as bright as stars and shining with tears that they aren’t allowed to shed because “Blacks don’t cry” and he presses a finger to his lips. Phineas swallows his questions and goes back to listening.

“…another chance,” father says.

Mother makes a soft noise, and Phineas thinks that she must be pressing her fist to her bodice to remind herself to keep breathing. She’s not allowed to cry either. “Of course,” she says.

…

Sirius’ magic is in his smile and his words. He can weave a story better than anyone, and for as long as Phineas can remember, it’s been Sirius who’s been telling him his bedtime stories. At first it was while sitting in mother’s lap and stumbling over the words, tracing them with his finger as he frowned in concentration. Then, as he grew, Sirius would come to read without mother, and he would slip into Phineas’ bed so that Phineas could follow the words.

Now, neither of them need the books, they know the tales so well, but Sirius still tells them. He does voices. Phineas curls into his brother’s side and listens to the Tale of Three Brothers for the hundredth time and smiles every time he catches something slightly different. The story is always different, and always in different ways – it stops them both from getting bored.

Some things are always the same, and those are the voices. His favourite of Sirius’ voices is Death. His voice goes soft and sinuous and gently cajoling; deeper than his normal voice and so much smoother, and Phineas thinks that when Sirius grows up that he’ll sound like that all the time. Ignotus Peverell sounds soft and shy; his brother Antioch is brash and blustering, and it’s only when he’s speaking through Sirius that the Elves ever has to look in on them to shush them; Cadmus is sneering and haughty and reminds Phineas horribly of Lord Prince, who comes to visit father sometimes.

Sirius lingers over Death that night, and he brushes a kiss over Phineas’ brow when he’s finished greeting Ignotus as a long-lost friend.

“Sirius?” Phineas asks when his brother slides out of bed. “What does ‘defective’ mean?”

Sirius takes a deep breath, and looks down at him with a smile. “Broken,” he says. “They were talking about great-grandfather’s wand. Some of them get temperamental over time, especially when they’re not used.”

Phineas frowns because that’s not what it had sounded like at all, but adults are strange and Sirius knows everything, so he nods and snuggles down into his pillow. “That’s a shame,” he says. “Goodnight, Sirius.”

“Goodnight.”

…

Phineas thinks that Sirius might be his favourite person in the whole world. Sirius is the kindest of their family, and the cleverest – he’s the one who slips frogs into teacups and strings pondweed from the chandeliers; he’s the one who can list the Lords of their House all the way back to Betelgeuse the Black, the fourteenth century Dark Lord who was poisoned by his son in exchange for a barony. 

Sirius is definitely nicer than cousin Perseus, who struts around the house when he visits, even though he’s not a Black but a Nott. _He_ ’s at Hogwarts already – Slytherin, of course – and seems to think that they should lick his boots because of it, even though he’s only a second year. 

Mother and father don’t seem to notice how Perseus shoves them into corners and stabs his wand into their ribs. They’re too busy talking to Aunt Myra and her husband, exchanging gossip and worries that make spots of colour appear in mother’s pale cheeks. He thinks he sees her mouth the word “Squib”, but he’s too distracted by the pain in his side as Perseus looms over him to be sure.

Perseus is smiling, and that’s never good.

…

Sirius is completely still. Phineas runs over to him, but he knows before he reaches him that there’s nothing he can do. There’s nothing that even St Mungo’s can do, with that much blood spreading over the grass. Betelgeuse the Black might have been able to make Sirius sit up again, but it wouldn’t really have been Sirius.

Sirius’ head is at a funny angle that hurts Phineas’ neck just to look at, and the side of his head is dented in. Phineas can see white and pink-grey through Sirius’ hair and on the rock that he’d fallen on and he feels sick but he can’t stop _looking_. There’s so much blood, there’s too much blood, and Sirius’ eyes are staring up at the sky where Perseus circles like a vulture on his broom.

He tells the adults later that Sirius fell when they were flying and it’s not his fault that Sirius was a filthy Squib. Mother slaps him and Phineas knows that she knows that Sirius didn’t get on a broom willingly – he hated flying and always did, and Perseus made him and he pushed him.

…

There are no more stories. There’s no more Perseus. Mother won’t stop crying even though she’s not supposed to, and Phineas gets smacked for taking great-grandfather’s defective wand and snapping it over his knee.

It’s worth it. Sirius’ magic is gone now, because Perseus heard the word “Squib” and thought he could get away with it, but Sirius was a wizard and he couldn’t.

Sirius was a wizard. Sirius never lied to him. 

…

From his first year in Hogwarts – Slytherin, of course – he brings home a stone frog. Sirius liked frogs, especially when he made them materialise in teacups, and this one is the pink-grey of his clever brain as it leaked through his hair. Phineas places it on the rock where he fell and strokes his fingers over its bumpy back and tells the story of the Three Brothers.

He can’t do voices like Sirius can, so he doesn’t even try. He likes to think that Sirius listens. When he goes back inside, he repeats the story to Elladora and Isla, because they can’t remember Sirius telling it to them – they were too little, and to them he’s just a name on a tapestry and not a kind and clever _wizard_ who was the best brother that a brother could be.

…

When Phineas was Sorted, he told the Hat that he wanted to be headmaster of Hogwarts. He didn’t say why, but the Hat understood and put him where he wanted – needed – to go.

The first thing he does when he sits behind his new desk, is to pick up his quill and write a new rule in ink as red as spilled blood.

_All students must be in possession of their own wand. All pre-owned and second-hand wands are strictly forbidden._

He will not have another Sirius, not for as long as he’s headmaster – no student will be thought a Squib when they’re not.

 _nestled in curls of dead leaves,  
a stone frog the color of your brain  
prepares his leap._ \- Ted Kooser


End file.
